Thursday, November 9, 2017

Thursday, January 26, 2017

I thought it might be fun to build a musical instrument. I decided to design my own concoction comprised of a cigar box guitar body, hurdy gurdy wheel crank, mountain dulcimer fret scale, tenor banjo neck, and 3/4 scale cello strings. In the tradition of the great hurdy gurdy luthiers of antiquity I carved a face (my wife Martha) on the tuning head stock. I worked sporadically on it whenever inspired between sculpting animated film maquettes. I really enjoyed the intuitional process of designing it as I built it. I even decided to add an internal auxilary soundboard for extra tone and volume. On the bittersweet day of completion I tuned up the three cello strings to an open C, turned the crank handle, and discovered that it actually worked!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

My career as a sculptor began in the 1980s taking commissions from an art gallery that specialized in woodcarvings. Carving wood was kind of like training for clay sculpting while wearing wrist weights.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

When I was thirteen my Aunt Nancy worked at a big printing company and would sometimes bring me large scraps of paper. I didn't have any real art supplies so I would draw with my dad's ballpoint pens. I loved drawing... but not the drawings, so when I was finished I would always throw them away. When my mom saw this dragon she liked it well enough to rescue it from the trash and even enter it in a community art contest four years later. I always hated games and contests and so my parents had to force me to go and collect the first prize. I remember being completely embarrassed by what to me was now this "little kid" drawing. I was by then an adult high school student after all. I must admit that I was thrilled though when I found out about the $50.00 worth of art supplies that were part of my winnings. We didn't have art classes at our school and I remember carefully trying to figure out how they all worked. I always wanted to use them sparingly so that they might last me until I was old enough to buy more.

This is one of only a few surviving pieces of my childhood art found stored away in a box that my mother had saved for me until she passed away in 2002.